What in the world?! Ol' Jaxon's up and posting during daylight hours? It canna be true!!

Oh, Hi There! How are ya'? Welcome to the Matinee Edition of What Can Ya' Do? !

I'm here, Juli, I'm here! Haven't withered up and blown away....yet. *smiles!* As hinted at in a previous post or two, I've been working pretty much exclusively on a song for the last several months, which makes it sound like it should be some real hot snot. Unfortunately, though, the time spent working on it has been due to the rather amorphous nature of the song itself, its shape-shifting arrangement and the hell of trying to make a recording sparkle like a Geoff Emerick production. (Okay, so it's a tremendously FUN hell but, still....) Lots of Time Spent does not necessarily equal Stellar Song. This means that I've routinely been up 'til between 1:30 and 4:00 almost every night and surviving on 4-5 hours of sleep a night, except weekends when I'm basically asleep for hours during the day. Siestas over lunch-hour at work have helped, too, but there's only so much catnaps can do. It's The Kid's fault: she claims she needs the "mixing computer" (the one that's powered by a TurboJet engine) to work on something stupid and pointless, like, oh, what did she call it again, Homework? "Bah!" sez I, "Homework, schmomework!" But she feels a compelling need (Where does she get this OCD trait from? Must be her Mother) to have all ONE HUNDRED PERCENTS in her classes....that damn 97 is driving her crazy....diligence in schoolwork must skip a generation or something....

Anyway.....so, it's a good thing that I'm a Nightowl at heart. I've been doing the recording portion during the early evening hours when Sunny and Kato are still prowlling around and then mixing the results 'til the wee hours. The Good News is that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Admittedly, it's felt more like digging a HOLE than a tunnel, per se, but as of yesterday afternoon, the recording part of the song is complete! (Oh, boy, I've jinxed myself now for sure!) What's left is to pursue the elusive (there's that phrase again, C.!) combination of sounds/effects to make the song really shine in its mastered state. The Mastering portion is something that I know jusssst enough about to be considerably dangerous but not remotely skilled at. I haven't pulled a Second Arrangement on the track yet but the MultitrackStudio software is pretty forgiving that way: not like in those days of yore when Magnetic Tape could take away weeks worth of work with just one mispushed (nice word, Jaxon!) bootahn! I once wiped out a lovely piano solo that way......it still hurts.....

The thing is this: ordinarily I'd master a version that was "good enough" for me to listen to but I'm hoping to make a gift of this song so, even if the music, lyrics and arrangement completely suck, I want it to sound it's very best in clearly showing off its utter suckiness. As I told C. the other day: it's like a fingerpainting over which a 5 y.o. exclaims "Look what I made for you!!" From the Hopeful side of the tally, C.--that oh-so-lucky person--is the only one to see the lyrics (except for the few excerpts/lines I've sneaked in here) and she didn't seem too violently nauseated by them, so I'll take that as a good sign. I've been promising to run the tune past her (one of these days, I promise!), you know, to see if it Plays In Peoria but I'm afraid I'm going to run out of time and she'll get to "preview" it after the cat's outta the bag.

Besides being completely obsessed with this purported piece of art (piece of WHAT?), everything's been pretty much status quo around here. Sunny had a cyst bothering some of her internal plumbing, but the docs said there was no cancer detected and to just let it run its course, which, so far, seems to be a course of Going Away. Good news! Kato's been doing theater stuff at school and is still one of THE coolest people I know: funny, grounded, smart-as-hell, nice, good-hearted....just the best! I'm so glad my wife cheated on me! (All right, I've been told that that joke has become quite old so let me here and now lay it to rest. Hell, I think it's funny but.....ya' know....fresh material and all that....)

The unsettling question has been raised by a certain party who knows who they are: Okay, so when you're done with this (alleged) song of yours, THEN what're you gonna do? Well, I DO have quite a few other song ideas perking but for now I'm going to get back to writing fiction again (it's been so long, that I'm not sure which end of the typewriter to blow into any more), SO, hopefully this will mean a bit more diligency in posting here, if not for any other reason than to procrastinate....*heh!* I know that this song has been quite difficult--for a variety of reasons, pragmatic and emotional--but it's time to switch gears for awhile and work in another medium, although with the routine breakery of my New Year's Resolutions (remember those, Jaxon??), that I should not be working in another medium but perhaps another Xtra Large. *rimshot!* Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.....errr.....um....*cough*....yes, well, another topic for another day.....

Anyway, Juli, yes, I'm still alive and kickin'--thanks for asking/caring! I'll have to catch up on your journal entries to see what you've been up to. Did you make it to Maggie's Farewell to Tarwathie party? I saw the pics but didn't see you there in the throng. What a crowd! It won't be the same without her. I hope you and yours have all been well! Festival season's coming--got that 20 lb. bag of jewels set in some more nice pieces already? *smiles!*

Take care everyone--it's Siesta Time now!

Love~

Jaxon

P.S. Not sure, but I thought I saw Blue acting all shy around Syl the other day.....